They met at a prearranged spot just outside their secret locker, and Simara launched herself into his embrace. They bounced off a wall and hung together as she clutched him, and she seemed like such a tiny, frail creature, a clinging elf. She pushed away finally and tapped the wall for stability. “Sorry,” she said as she hovered before him with a grin of victory. “For being such a stir-crazy pervert. It just feels so good to be out of my cell.”
“Are we still okay?”
She smiled with reassurance. “We’re not dead yet.” She tapped an access code to open their locker and peered inside. Two rigid spacesuits with ablative shields stood upright like white cruise missiles. “Good job, Zen. You are totally my hero.”
A muffled explosion sounded in the distance and left behind a squeal of escaping air.
“Vacuum breach,” Simara shouted into a whistling wind. “Get in your suit and stay close to the wall.” She dove headfirst into her bulky spacesuit and quickly sealed it up as Zen floundered to get his in position. He tipped his head back into the belly of the enclosure and squirmed his way up toward light coming down from the faceplate. The suit felt stiff and top-heavy below the armoured dome. He tucked up his legs and stepped into rigid leggings, then inserted his arms. He clamped the front of his suit and powered it up. The system whined with a whir of hydraulics. “Can you hear me?”
“Hurry up.” Simara’s voice sounded panicky, and she looked like a robot with a rocket cone above her head. “We’re dropping like an asteroid and picking up speed.”
“Are you okay?”
“No, I feel wretched. I think I’m going to piss my panties.”
“You said you’d done this.”
Simara floated to the airlock hatch and peered through a dark portal. “Simulations are wonderful things, but it seems more real when it’s real.” She tapped the override code into the failsafe mechanism, and the lock clunked inside. “Give me a hand with this door. Do you have air? Are you secure?”
“I’m fine. Almost pure oxygen on the meter.” Zen leaned against the handle and grunted as he slid the door open to endless night. “Holy Kiva.” The curved edge of Cromeus lay below, a blue jewel wreathed in cloud. “It’s beautiful. So calm and peaceful.”
Simara edged up beside him. “Think good thoughts. You go first. If you have any trouble, I might be able to help.”
Zen peered out at the emptiness of space and felt a gut-wrenching solitude. “It looks like a long way. I can’t jump that far.”
“Yes, you can. Just line it up and push off. Gravity will do the rest. Don’t try to look back for the ship or worry about me. The first few seconds will be the most dangerous part. One drogue chute will deploy from your feet to grab any stray molecules up this high and help point you down. Keep your arms and legs tucked under your shield during deceleration. When we reach terminal velocity, your shield will eject and a second drogue chute will deploy from your back for free flight. Try to control any spin by using your outstretched arms like a bird. An uncontrolled spin will push blood to your brain and black you out. In less than five minutes your paraglider will deploy, and you’ll be home free.”
“Do you know we’re going to survive? Have you seen the future?”
Simara sighed with exasperation. “No. I don’t know, Zen. I’m not a fortuneteller. We don’t have any guarantee of divine grace. I have a feeling that you might survive, okay?”
Zen turned back to face her. “If this is our last jump to glory, we should settle things between us.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You want to talk about our relationship? Now?”
“This might be our final moment together.”
“Don’t think like that. You’ve got to stay positive if we’re going to get through this—joke around a bit and consider death elusive. It’s called wartime camaraderie.”
Zen held Simara’s gaze. “I love you, Simara. Right here, right now.”
She blushed and fumed behind her faceplate, but kept her eyes steady. “Fine. I love you, too.”
“Okay, then.” He grinned to himself in victory. “Let’s do this.”
Simara turned to look out the open portal. “Our timing will have to be impeccable. This dead hulk will be accelerating fast, and we don’t want to go in with any speed greater than the terminal velocity of our natural mass. I’ve been calculating some trajectory simulations on the fly, but there are a lot of estimated parameters.”
Zen peered again into the gaping maw of space and felt rekindled fear. “What do you suggest?”
“Now would be good.”
“Now?”
“Give or take a few seconds.”
Zen clenched his teeth and stared at Cromeus in the distance. Could invisible tentacles of gravity reach up this high to claim him? Or would he float forever in the stillness of vacuum? He lumbered into position in the doorway and readied himself. “Thanks for crashing in my backyard, Simara. I’d rather die here with you than spend my life in a cave mourning my father.”
“You’re not going to die, Zen. People pay big money for extreme sports like this. Just go ahead and jump.”
He studied the surface of Cromeus. The famous blue planet was actually more brown than blue on close inspection. Plenty of dry land, and cities with lights in the creeping shadow of darkness. The notion of choosing a target seemed ludicrous. Does a meteor have any choice where it lands? Does a skyfall princess? He tipped forward and pointed his ablative shield down. He positioned himself with precision—straight like an arrow to the heart of Cromeus! Think good thoughts. He dove into nothingness.
“Are you there, Simara?”
“Right on your pretty-boy ass. Keep your head down.”
“Are we falling?”
“Like a shooting star. Keep your head down.”
No sound. No wind pressure. No landmarks. It seemed as though time and space had stopped for Zen, and a feeling of calm soothed his jangled nerves. This wasn’t so bad.
“You’re developing a spin,” Simara said. “Deploy your drogue chute by pressing the blue button on your inside forearm, left side.”
Zen followed her instruction and heard a popping sound near his feet. The horizon continued to tilt. “I don’t think it’s working.”
“No air yet,” Simara said. “You’re deployed, don’t worry. I’ve got you in view. Your chute’s starting to drag a bit. You’re doing great.”
The Cromean horizon continued to skew upward and then disappeared from sight. All he could see was an expanse of stars like sprinkles of confetti in black eternity. No troopship, no planet, nothing at all. His gut coiled like a serpent. “I don’t think it’s working,” he repeated.
No reply. No visual reference but the tangled skein of a distant galaxy. He felt frozen in time, floating free in endless space. Completely still.
Warmth wafted down on his cheeks from above, and his skin prickled with panic as the temperature increased. Soon he was sweltering and sweaty in his tomb. The heat steadily mounted to incendiary levels. Was he burning up, flashing out? Were they dead already? “Simara?”
The sound of her gasping breath came from someplace far away, laboured in distress and irregular. Was she dying? “Simara?”
“We’re not fucking there yet, Zen. Shit. You’re coming around. Keep tight.”
He hugged himself like a turtle and trembled with fear in a fiery alien hell as white mist obscured his view, turning pink and then red. He could sense no gravity, no movement, nothing at all but the searing heat. His thoughts seemed lazy and stupid as his brain succumbed to fever—like trying to slur speech from sleep during a nightmare. One breach in their suits and they would be cooked meat—two burnt birds coming in on the night. The twinned sound of their wheezing breath became a dancing storm in his ear, and he had plenty of time for regret, plenty of time to pray to Kiva. The mottled crescent of Cromeus appeared through hissing mist, and a thud jolted him as his ablative shield blew away and his second drogue chute deployed behind him. The horizon cartwhe
eled as drops of sweat spun from his chin.
“Woohoo,” Simara shouted. “That must be terminal velocity. Get ready to fly.”
Zen thought of dino-birds in the mountains of Bali pushing hatchlings into the air, forcing maturity on them like any good parent testing their genome. He had seen the brittle bones of the weaklings in the foothills.
“You’re in a flat spin,” Simara said. “Stick out an arm and try to work something. The wind is your friend.”
Zen tried both arms and bent his legs. He writhed and twisted, but couldn’t find a target on the horizon. Nothing seemed to make sense. He closed his eyes against nausea and felt a blow on his shoulder.
“Zen,” Simara shouted. “Wake up and grab my arm!”
He flailed a hand and felt momentary purchase. He peered wildly for a glimpse of her as she came round another time. He reached for her and slapped onto her arm, but she slipped away. The horizon stabilized.
“Hold that form,” Simara said. “Can you feel equilibrium yet?”
A press of wind began to push against his chest like a force of nature from his grounder home. He learned from it, tested it, and found stability. “Yeah.” He studied the mottled brown of the surface as it crept perceptibly closer. “I don’t see any water.” No blue, no perfect squares of green, just wild land and dangerous terrain. “And those ribbons of cloud look ominous. Is that a storm?”
Simara grunted assent. “Life is for living.”
His paraglider deployed, pulling him up with a jolt like the hand of Kiva grabbing him by the groin, and he reached up to snag dangling handles.
“Showtime,” Simara whispered.
Zen struggled to plot his trajectory as a stormy gale began to buffet from the right. “That valley to the left,” he said. “There’s a small stream.”
“Got it. Good as any.”
“Where are you?”
“Just above. I don’t want to tangle in your lines. Find us a soft spot.”
The ground came up fast, too fast, and his chest tightened with alarm. He swung his paraglider against gusts of wind and tried for a snaking length of stream, but hit some underbrush and landed skidding on the shore as his chute tangled in the foliage and dragged him to a halt.
“Shit,” Simara said as her shadow passed. “Oww.”
Zen looked up to see her glider catch on a tree branch and slam her into a sharp ledge of granite. One side of her chute cut free and floundered like a dying ghost as she fell. She cried out in pain as she hit the rocky ground and rolled down an incline into a pile of boulders.
“Simara!” Zen struggled to fight against gravity—now suddenly dead weight on the ground like an armoured statue sunk in thick mud. He could barely bend a knee to move as he scrambled to disconnect his harness. “Simara?”
He ripped at the clamps on his chest and climbed out of his stiff robot body. He ran up the beach to her and found her twisted like a broken doll among the rocks. Her cracked faceplate was dark, her body unmoving. “Simara!”
Zen wrestled with the clamps on her spacesuit and reached inside for her warm body. No pulse on her inert chest, no signs of life. His eyes watered with frustration as he pushed against her rib cage, forcing plasma to move, hoping for a miracle. He tested her bones for breaks and checked for visible damage. He had to get her out of this mechanical crypt! He pulled her legs free one by one and hauled her from the orifice like a stillborn baby from an artificial womb. When her head came into view, he saw blood dripping from her nose and ears. No!
Zen wiped her face with the cuff of his sleeve and checked her throat for obstruction. Her teeth were all fine, and her gums free of blood. He blew a breath into her mouth and watched her chest rise. He pushed on her heart in quick pulse as her body deflated, then filled her with another breath, keeping the pace, holding fast to faith. He pulled the breathing tube from her crumpled spacesuit and took a rich breath of oxygenated air, then expelled it into Simara’s broken frame, over and over, pumping her chest with steady rhythm. Her throat rattled with phlegm.
A helicopter came screaming down the valley with twin searchlights and beat the air above as Zen worked at resuscitation. Waves whipped up in a froth on the river as the craft settled on pontoons and expelled two children onto the beach, a boy and girl dressed in plain cellulose, thin wraiths, perhaps teenagers at best. They rushed forward and fell on their knees at his side.
“Mothership has gone quiet,” the girl said. “It’s a terrible omen.”
“No,” Zen said and blew rich oxygen inside Simara’s limp body. How long had it been since she stopped breathing on her own? How long could she last before permanent damage? “How did you find us? Are you omnidroid?”
“Simara is our elder,” the boy said. “We’re always in touch with her.”
“Can you connect with her now? Is there no brain activity at all?”
The boy grimaced sadly and shook his head.
The girl held up a palm. “Wait. Fermi, did you hear that?”
The boy closed his eyes and peered up at his skullrider vision. “What?”
“I thought I heard something.”
Zen took a huge breath of air and blew it into Simara, forcing sustenance into her, pushing his luck to the end. What could these babies know about life and death?
“I heard that,” the boy said. “Did you hear that?”
“Mothership is back online,” the girl said with a squeal of delight. “She says to bring Simara to the helicopter.”
Zen wagged his chin. “She’s had a wicked blow to the head. She can’t be moved.”
The boy, Fermi, put his tiny hand on Zen’s shoulder with eerie confidence. “Bring her to the helicopter.”
Zen forced another breath of air past blue lips, and Simara coughed in reply, but he couldn’t tell if it was a last gasp of death or first hope of life. She was barely a feather-sprite in his arms as he picked her up and gently cradled her. He stumbled over rocks along the beach with his lips on hers, dripping tears on her tranquil face as he followed the children to the helicopter and climbed aboard. He continued a steady exhalation into her tiny body with faith and promise as they rose into the air and sped away over the trees. He would gladly breathe life into her precious mouth forever, never sleeping, never weary.
PART THREE
RONI
EIGHT
Roni knew how to tease meaning from the manic rush of the V-net, to distill it down to the news that mattered—that was his expertise as a media darling in New Jerusalem and anchorman for the Daily Buzz. And he didn’t go for all that talking-head virtuality crap or the pop-culture mayhem of the vidi slashers. He came to the office in person every day and sat in front of the cameras, blemishes and all. Roni had a creamy complexion, a full head of dark hair, and a secret weapon in Derryn the makeup boy who wielded pure genius with a brush, but it was content that drove his high ratings and big bonus bucks. He had a nose for news and prided himself on finding the real story behind the headlines.
He strolled into the newsroom to find five staffers busy at their terminals stroking the V-net feeds for daily drama like trawlermen checking their lines for a good catch. They had their thoughts plugged up on viewscreens to share internal visions with the team, and Roni watched images flash like lightning as their fleeting minds paraded the virtual landscape. “Did you see the one where the escaped criminal jumps into space from a crashing troopship and lives?”
His executive editor, Gladyz van-Dam, looked over from her thoughtscreen and pursed pretty lips. She wore her brown hair long and fashionably curled to her shoulders, a source of pride for her though she never appeared on camera. “Yeah, heady stuff. Made a six-point on the chart for a few minutes. She’s still in a coma, kind of a dead end.”
“What’s the real story?”
Gladyz grinned. “You know I love it when you talk dirty, Roni.” She arched her eyebrows in fake flirtation and began searching for data on the V-net. “The charge was murder, no details released pending jury selection.
”
“Great, I love a good body count.”
“Oooh, get this, she’s omnidroid.”
Roni flinched. “Bummer.”
“Yeah.” Gladyz nodded. “Bad magic—probably why the first run didn’t mention it. She’s been working hard-life on the Babylon trade route. Strange place for an omnidroid.”
Roni sidled up and peeked over her shoulder. “Yeah, but a great place to get away with murder. You got any vidi on this femme fatale?”
“Not yet. Here’s a still.” She relayed a photo for view.
White spacer skin like fish flesh, blue eyes, dark hair cut short—pretty girl, but not a starlet. “She’s just a kid. What, seventeen, twenty?”
Gladyz chewed her lower lip as she scrolled through layers of data. She wore wide-lapel suits to work with skirts above the knee, playing the dignified executive for what it was worth and showing off great legs. She was a veteran production editor and directed the camera crew with a firm hand. “Hmm, no birth registry in the system. But you’re right, she does look young—like an elf.”
“A biogen with no date stamp,” Roni said. “Could she be from Earth, smuggled through the Macpherson Doorway?”
“I doubt it. The quarantine dates back over a dozen years. She would have been a baby at the time.”
“The Doorway is a sieve these days. Lots of genetic material gets through.”
Gladyz shook her bouncy brown locks. “But not a biogen—that’s the type of thing they’re most worried about, a genetically engineered plague or virus. Just imagine what a pandemic from Earth would do to our limited population base.”
“Okay, what do we have? An omnidroid of unknown origin, a mystery girl charged with murder and left behind on a crashing troopship. Makes me tingle all over.”
“I love it when you tingle. You want to work with it? There’s an accomplice. A Bali boy.”
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